The Certillian Empire

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The Map of the Certillian Empire.

The 10 Royal Houses and the Royal Family of Cerula that holds the power of the land.

Vitae and Techniques

Vitae is physical energy, born from the heart and the tangible within the human body. All living beings have a base amount of physical energy inside of them, but it takes time, skill, and inherent potential to broaden this physical energy into a true resource to channel into techniques.

Techniques often require an act of word or movement to activate, but training out of the need for these concentration aids are rites of passage in mastering specific techniques. Those who use techniques are often referred to as martials, fighters, brawlers, cultivators, vitaecian, and vanguards, although other terminology exists, such as the academic title “Vitae-Versed.”

Stances are an integral aspect of using techniques, as they prime the user’s Vitae to be more receptive to certain techniques. A stance that primes the Vitae to be more defensive will boost the effects of a technique’s defensive aspects. Some techniques require a specific type of primed Vitae to be used at all.

Vitae is also used in channeling. A foundational base for techniques, channeling allows Vitae to be worked into the weapon the user is holding, enhancing its durability, sharpening its blade, and giving it resistance to magical effects and other benefits.

In-Text Techniques

Air Dance Technique: A technique that sends Vitae into the air underneath the user’s feat and solidifying it into a small platform, allowing the user to run and walk through the air while they maintain concentration.

Colossal Might Technique: This technique allows the user to grow their physical form to a more formidable size, increasing muscle strength in return for slower speeds. Overuse of this technique can cause skeletal strain.

Counterstrike Technique: A technique that allows the user, when injured, to empower their next strike against their attacker. The strike is empowered based on the severity of the triggering injury and is drawn to the attacker, even if they are unseen.

Deep Blue Technique: A technique that allows the user to send Vitae into their eyes, tinting the physical world in a blue hue that reveals all living creatures and moving objects in a red light. Overuse of this technique leads to blindness.

First Dance Technique: Sunrise Over the Mesa: A technique that requires the First Dance Stance. The user enhances the ambient heat in the environment around them, before collecting and pushing it all into one area, creating an area of bright light and heat that burns everything within it.

First Dance Technique: Twister Through the Valley: A technique that requires the First Dance Stance. The user manipulates the wind and air into a twister that moves with the user, amplifying their speed and strength with the force of a natural disaster.

Great Wind Sprint Technique: A technique that requires the user to circulate their Vitae into the air around them as they move, subtly manipulating it to push them forward and with less resistance. Allows for vastly increased speed and easier vertical movement.

Guard Periculum Technique: This technique, which requires high amounts of concentration and calm, allows the user to sense active danger to their person in a larger perimeter around them. The larger the perimeter, the more concentration required.

Healing Flesh Technique: A highly strenuous technique, the user directs their Vitae into their wounds and injuries, enhancing the healing process and allowing rapid regeneration. Requires high concentration and large amounts of Vitae.

Instinctive Reflex Technique: A technique that enhances the reflexes of the user, heightening their instinctive reactions to danger and allowing their body to move out of the way of attacks before their mind catches up.

Iron Skin Technique: A technique that enhances the skin of the user, imbuing the defensive power of iron across their body in specific areas. Higher proficiencies of the technique allow for full body enhancement.

Horizon Throw Technique: Similar to the Wide Cleave Technique, this technique massively amplifies the edge of the user’s weapon beyond the physical blade, creating a more far-reaching, deadlier projectile. The technique also increases the speed of the thrown object, making it somewhat frictionless to air.

Nightingale Shift Technique: This technique allows the user to become unseen to the naked eye for a short period of time, with any act of aggression breaking this invisibility.

Ripping Slice Technique: This technique has the user enhance their weapon with a Vitae tinged for war, making wounds inflicted by the weapon harder to heal and recover from.

Redirecting Hand Technique: This technique allows the user to coat their hands in Vitae, allowing them absorb harmful energies with one of their hands, before redirecting the absorbed energy out of their other hand.

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Scourger Bloodhound Technique: This technique allows the user to pull the ambient Vitae from their five senses and collect it into their sense of smell, vastly enhancing the sole sense in return for rendering their other senses useless for a time.

Skip Dash Technique: A technique that allows the user to enhance their speed exponentially in one small moment, granting them incredible evasive ability. Highly Vitae intensive and control of movement requires intense training.

Swift Throw Technique: A technique that allows the user to accelerate the act of retrieving and throwing an object to superhuman levels, thereby allowing multiple objects to be thrown in short time.

Swordspear Technique: A technique that channels Vitae into a straight bladed weapon, amplifying the sharp tip of the blade beyond the physical edge for one short moment.

Wide Cleave Technique: A simple to learn, but difficult to master technique that amplifies the edge of the user’s weapon beyond the physical blade, giving it a larger, somewhat difficult to notice, attack range.

Wind Axe Technique: A technique that allows the user to solidify the air using Vitae into the form of a simple throwing axe, which can be thrown and used in combat for a short time.

In-Text Stances

Dancing Star Stance: A stance that primes the user’s Vitae to be more conductive and long-lasting outside the user’s body. Allows the user to manipulate objects, commonly weapons, they’ve recently imbued their Vitae into.

Iron Knight Stance: A stance that primes the user’s Vitae to be more defensive and increases their endurance and resistance to injury. A common stance taught to the guards of the Certillian Empire.

First Dance Stance: An ancient stance from the land of Rusk. Few are given the right to learn it, even fewer manage to master it. This stance primes the user’s Vitae to saturate the environment around the user, moving with the primal energies of the weather.

Mana and Spells

Mana is spiritual energy, born from the mind and the ethereal within the human body. Like Vitae, all creatures have a base amount of spiritual energy inside of them, but it takes time, skill, and inherent potential to hone that speck of spiritual energy into a true well of Mana to cast spells from.

Spells require incantations, longer ritualistic acts of spoken word and other foci (sometimes involving certain materials) that help concentrate Mana into the grooves of the spell. Those who cast spells are often referred to as sorcerers, magicians, wizards, warlocks and bards, although other terminology exists, such as the academic title “Mana-Versed.”

Shortening incantations, or learning to no longer require certain foci for a spell, requires tremendous skill and time. Silent spells are considered a far bigger accomplishment than silent techniques due to the larger investment required to achieve such a mastery with Mana, it being a hard to grasp energy that requires tremendous focus.

Additionally, whereas techniques have stances to prime Vitae, Mana instead has rituals. Rituals are longer castings of spells, often requiring days to months to cast larger, powerful spells. Often, multiple magicians of different or similar studies work together on rituals, making them complex projects that produce far-reaching effects.

Another key aspect of Mana is enchantment. Mana is capable of imbuing objects over long periods of time with complex magical abilities, with enchanters and artificers, creators of magical devices composed of multiple magical components, being in high demand throughout Derra.

In-Text Spells

Clear River of Memories (“From a foggy torrent, from a cracked mirror, ordain this one with insight of yesteryear, of that which has passed and become dormant. Brush away the dust.”): A spell of Memory Magic. This spell causes the target to fall into a coma as they vividly remember their life. The user cannot direct the target to specific memories, with such a responsibility falling to the target. The target can get lost in their memories if they do not stay focused and can remain in the coma for a long period of time.

Map of Consciousness (“Memories of memories, mind eye awakening.”): A spell of Memory Magic. This spell outlines the impacts on the target’s memory, from trauma to magical tempering. The user is able to identify the general details of when, where, and why a memory was forgotten if they are strong enough.

Shatter Thy Sight (---): A spell of Shatter Magic. This spell breaks and crushes an object or area within the user’s sight, but has little direct effect on living creatures. The explosive shockwaves of the spell, however, can be weaponized.

Shatter Thy World (“Derra, I demolish.”): A spell of Shatter Magic. This spell breaks and crushes the area around the user, including above and below. Far more destructive, this spell can cause great harm to those beyond the user and the explosive shockwaves of the spell are considerably more dangerous.

Strike of Lightning (“Lord of Thunder grant me nimbus strength, inner energy.”): A spell of Lightning Magic. This spell shoots a fierce bolt of lightning from the hand of the user at the target. It’s true equivalency to a lightning bolt is contested, but it is hard to dodge and can be devastating in the hands of a master magician.